The exhibition Pacific Shorcuts presents artists from Australia and New Zealand who tackle the notion of nature and natural processes via the medium of technology. Within the month long period there will be three artists presented simultaneously every ten days. Besides, there will be a series of lectures and performances.

At the opening, Cecelia Cmielewski, one of the authors of the Australian multi-cultural arts policies will present a lecture entitled: “Identity, (u)topia and soft power: arts policy in the co-production of multicultural Australia”, including case-studies of contemporary Australian art. The evening continues with the series of sound performances in the form of artistic presentation by Nigel Helyer, as well with the opening of the first part of the exhibition where the works of Mez Breeze and Nigel Helyer are being exhibited.

Mez Breeze is presented with a series of works in different media: Wish4[0] is a multimedia internet project that lasted for forty days in the form of a diary, video works which emerged within that project as well as graphics titled ‘204 NO CONTENT’ which were made in 2001. in cooperation with the curator of the exhibition Darko Fritz. It is worth mentioning that Darko Fritz, is exhibiting his work in the space of grey) (area for the first time, although he has been managing and curating the program for nine years already.

‘204 NO CONTENT’ is a poetical and graphic map that was published by gallery S from Koprivnica and contains poetry of Mez Breeze and graphic works of Dark Fritz. Mez is the inventor of her own language – mezangelle – a mix of English and programming languages- where the visual appearance of written words and the reader’s interpretations of those words play an important role.

“Wish4[0]” (http://wishforyouand.me) is set of 40 digital and networked poems based on a poetic interpretation of the maxim “Be Careful What You Wish For”. The title of the work, “Wish4[0]”is a truncation – and linguistic reworking – of the idea of wish fulfillment in the digital age, one where willing users and audience members are subjected to an “always-on” news cycle, where social media and content streaming are now a primary method of information sourcing and privacy is becoming an ever more elastic concept.

“Wish4[0]” takes as its inspiration this perpetual tugging at a user’s consciousness by the digital, in a cycle that promotes a type of constant remembering and forgetting of firehosed content. Each work takes as its immediate inspiration a headline (or item) drawn from the electronic news cycle of that specific day.

The resulting block of poetic works:
1) Act as a digital and creative “literary snapshot” of a specific period.
2) Highlight the accelerated nature of an electronic/networked-based news cycle.
3) Illustrate the discrepancies – and perhaps similarities – between how a digital audience responds to items deemed newsworthy (and worth remembering or forgetting) and creative responses to such items.
4) Echo (and partially emulate) elements of digital culture that have become seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives (including programs such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat and Instagram).

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Nigel Helyer presents a new version of his installation Songs from the UnderWorld_V3, now including new visual and sound elements made during his residence in Korčula. The new elements include mourning songs from Dalmatia and Lyre music build in vintage radio receivers.

The work tackles the issue of death from the perspective of the the myth of Orpheus and his journey into the Underworld where and examines the metaphor of the power of Art and Poetry to overcome mortality. The various layers of cultural audio are modified by underground seismic data.

Artist statement:
In a Cosmos of noise and static they say it is music that calms the savage beast. It is music and voice, fused into song that civilises us. Orpheus, the mythopoetic father of song sailed with Jason’s crew of the Argonauta and averted tragedy by outplaying the alluring song of the Sirens. And it was Orpheus who journeyed into the Underworld to reclaim his dead wife Euridice by charming Hades and Persephone with the song of his magical Lyre, asserting the power of love and music over death.

Again it was Orpheus who as he regained the Upperworld looked back at his beloved in a moment of forgetfulness, lost her forever. But then there is Maui,the Maori diety who also attempted to cheat death – but that’s another story ……..

Songs from the Underworld remixes Rilke’s Sonnets of Orpheus with Maori song in a sound installation driven by seismic environmental data. The stringed instrument, at once Lyre, Weapon and Antennae, a parabola tuned into the world and the afterlife.

Thanks to Tonci Sain (Korcula) and Alma Radovanovic (Viganj) who kindly loaned their vintage radio receivers.

“The fertility of Australian art is a product of successive, unending waves of human migration, as well as part of a global dialogue.” (Searle, Guardian, 2013)

Adrian Searle’s criticism of the exhibition Australia at the Royal Academy, London 2013 was based primarily on the lack of presentations of cultural diversity. Cecelia Cmielewski is conducting research for her PhD thesis on the multicultural arts policy adopted by the Australia Council for the Arts between 2006-2013. The Arts in a Multicultural Australia policy vision is that “Australia’s dynamic cultural life and practices are embraced, celebrated and created by the diversity of our cultures”.

This is to be achieved through culturally inclusive leadership; enabling participation in the arts for all Australians; supporting the development of creative content which reflects a multicultural Australia and encouraging creative interfaces between Indigenous and non-English speaking background artists by facilitating (format problem here) cultural exchanges.’ www.australiacouncil.gov.au/about/policies/arts_in_a_multicultural_australia_policy_2006

Her examination of policy and how it is enacted is framed by acknowledging the complex realities of cultural diversity and, that for artists from cultural minorities, presents an ambivalence in their cultural practice. For grey) (area, Cecelia will present on the aspect of cultural leadership that aims to increase understanding and inclusion.

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BIOS:

Cecelia Cmielewski is an arts leader whose research and analysis strategically develops and builds the capacity of the Australian creative sector. She holds an MBA (University of Adelaide), Bachelor of Design (University of South Australia) and a Bachelor of Arts (Flinders University). She is now undertaking her PhD at the Institute of Society and Culture at the University of Western Sydney. She held senior research, policy development and fund management roles at the Australia Council for the Arts, the Federal Government’s arts funding and advisory agency, between 1998 and 2011. Cecelia develops and facilitates roundtable industry consultations including the establishment of kultour, the national multicultural arts touring organization in 2002. She is a Chief Investigator on the five year ARC supported project Large Urban Screens and the Transnational Sphere with the University of Melbourne, Federation Square and Nabi Art Centre, Seoul. Cecelia produces artworks where social, technological and cultural engagements intersect to encourage new understanding across knowledge systems. She realises these artworks as an artist, curator and manager. Cecelia is invited on a regular basis to present at local, national and international forums on arts and multicultural societies, arts and technology and, at the inaugural World Forum Venice, on the relationship between culture and the environment. She actively maintains a wide range of international cultural networks and projects. In 2012 she curated Adaptation, the arts and ecology project with SymbioticA and Mandurah Council, produced semipermeable(+) for ISEA2013 and is curating meta_narratives for ISEA2014.
Nigel Helyer (a.k.a. DrSonique) is an independent sculptor and sound-artist. He is the director of a small multidisciplinary team Sonic Objects; Sonic Architecture which has forged an international reputation for large scale sound-sculpture installations, environmental public artworks, museum inter-actives and new media projects. His practice is strongly interdisciplinary, linking a broad platform of creative practice with scientific Research and Development in both Academic and Industrial contexts, and he maintains an active interest in critical and theoretical debates.
Nigel has a long standing practice in bio-art and environmental projects realising such works as “GeneMusiK”, a biological music remixing system, the insect installation “Host” and as the Artistic Director of the infamous “LifeBoat” project shown in Oslo Fjord 2004, on a Baltic cruise ship during ISEA 2004 and in Zagreb 2006. He has also worked as an artist & researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland (as part of the Artists in Labs programme), with the Tropical Marine Research Labs at the National University of Singapore and he maintains a working relationship with the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco.
Nigel held visiting Professor positions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, the department of Architectural Acoustics University of Sydney and the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW. He was the Head of the Sculpture Studio at the Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney) from 1985 until 1990 when he left to take up creative research.
His creative research activities include the development of a powerful virtual audio reality mapping system, “Sonic Landscapes” in collaboration with Lake Technology (now Dolby Australia) and he was the Artistic Director of the “AudioNomad Research Group” developing the “AudioNomad” location sensitive environmental audio system at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales (funded under a Synapse ARC grant in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Woo and Dr. Chris Rizos).
These and subsequent developments in acoustic cartography have been manifested as a series of substantial national and international exhibitions “Syren”, aboard the MV Opera in the Baltic Sea (ISEA2004), “Syren for Port Jackson” (MCA Sydney 2006), “Run Silent Run Deep” (National Museum of Singapore ISEA2008), “Ecolocated” (Belfast ISEA2009 + FACT in the AND Festival Liverpool 2009) and the “GhosTrain” Project (ABC Radiophonic Fellowship + The Performance Space 2009/2010).
A new creative initiative, developed during the “Ecolocated” (MARIN AIR) concerns the sonification of water quality data, a method which has been developed for a series of environmental audio-portraits, “VoxAura, the River is Singing”, for Turku, European Capital of Culture 2011; “CrayVox” for the Space(D) Biennale 2012; “Upstream/DownStream” a creative research commission from the Bundanon Trust 2014/17 and “Deluge” a current project in the Black Sea. As part of the ongoing collaboration with Dr. Mary-Anne Lea of the University of Tasmania Nigel is investigating the sonic potentials of bio-logging data collected by Seals under the Icecap in the Southern Oceans.
In what spare time remains Nigel is occupied with bushwalking, sailing traditional small craft and seakayaking.
http://www.sonicobjects.com

Mez Breeze has exhibited her ground-breaking creative work widely (eg “Arte Nuevo InteractivA” Mexico 2005, the “Radical Software” Show Turin Italy 2006, New Media Scotland 2008, Arnolfini Gallery Bristol 2010, Netherlands Media Arts Institute 2011, and Jeu de Paume Paris 2014). Her awards include the 2001 VIF Prize (Germany), the JavaMuseum Artist Of The Year 2001 (Germany), 2002 Newcastle New Media Poetry Prize (Australia), co-winner of the 2006 Site Specific Index Page Competition (Italy) and the Burton Wonderland Gallery Winner 2010 (judged by Hollywood Director Tim Burton). Her works reside in Collections as diverse as The World Bank and the PANDORA Electronic Collection at the National Library of Australia. Duke University have recently extended to Mez an invitation to develop a comprehensive career archive of her works, associated documents, correspondence and papers to be housed there at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Mez is also an Advisor to The Mixed Augmented Reality Art Research Organisation, is currently Senior Research Affiliate with The Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab, and the Creative Director of Mez Breeze Design [an agency which provides boutique digital product and design services including illustration, transmedia, text, games, interface design, and responsive media].
http://mezbreezedesign.com